After Pacific tour, Navy’s No. 2 talks readiness, staying ahead of competition

By CAITLIN DOORNBOS | STARS AND STRIPES

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran heard right from the source how the Navy's largest foreign command is keeping up with readiness challenges, including a significant maintenance backlog and an ever-increasing competition landscape.

Moran — the service's second-highest ranking officer — visited Navy bases in South Korea and Japan last week on a listening tour that he said brought helpful insight into on-the-ground operations in the Pacific.

“We in Washington have our own views about things and it's largely programmatic in nature, budgetary in nature and some policy,” he told Stars and Stripes in an interview Thursday. “But to get feedback from sailors, commanding officers, chiefs and master chiefs in the fleet really helps us refine and make sure that we're supporting from Washington what they need [in the Pacific].”

Readiness challenges

At Yokosuka on Thursday, Moran spent time on the waterfront discussing ship maintenance. The base is home to U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility Japan Regional Maintenance Center, which is working on what Moran called a “not insignificant” backlog. A request for exact numbers on that backlog went unanswered.

The 7th Fleet is operating with fewer ships than it had planned after two of its guided-missile destroyers — the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain — were severely damaged in separate fatal collisions at sea last year.

While Yokosuka added an additional destroyer — the USS Milius — earlier this year, the fleet remains down two operational ships because Milius was originally intended to be an additional ship in support of Indo-Pacific operations, former Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Scott Swift told Stars and Stripes last year.

Moran said the McCain, which is being repaired in Yokosuka, is expected to get out of drydock this fall and the Navy is aiming to have it underway in the spring. The Fitzgerald is undergoing maintenance in Pascagoula, Miss., and the service has said the goal is to return it to sea by 2020.

Moran said ship maintenance “is a key critical element for overall fleet readiness.”

“Everybody recognizes that we've got to do the maintenance that's built up over time. While that's important to everybody, no one likes to be in the yards,” Moran said. “There's a cost of doing that right now and we have to re-baseline the maintenance of our ships across the fleet, particularly [in the Pacific] because it is so active, it has been a very busy place for a long time.”

On Sept. 12, Moran and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Russell Smith toured Yokosuka's USS Blue Ridge, which has been undergoing maintenance for about two years. Crews first re-lit the boilers on the Navy's oldest commissioned operational ship in June, and Moran said the 7th Fleet's flagship is “about ready to go to sea.”

“She's outfitted like an old ‘57 Chevy that we've took the engine out, took the dashboard out and put all modern capability in, and man, she sounds and she's going to run kind of nice,” Moran said.

The Blue Ridge's staff moved back onto the ship this summer.

Capt. Brett Crozier, the Blue Ridge's commander, said it was an honor to host Moran.

Full article: https://www.stripes.com/news/after-pacific-tour-navy-s-no-2-talks-readiness-staying-ahead-of-competition-1.547999